POV: kaladin
Summary
In the riddens of a highstorm in Dalinar Kholin's warcamp, Kaladin sits alone in the dark of a small sergeant's room beside Bridge Four's new barrack, listening to his own breath like a private storm and turning over the difference between a lighteyes dying and a darkeyes dying — the rich set in stone, the common burned into smoke — and the equal way both kinds of breath move through the world. A new Kholin-blue cloak with Dalinar's glyph on the back hangs from a hook by the door; he touches it without taking it down, then steps out into the wet light as a free man for the first time in his adult life.
Bridge Four cheers him in the yard, half-shaved by Rock, the firepit washed out by the rain. Dalinar has given the former bridgemen a full block of twenty Soulcast stone barracks — enough to house roughly a thousand survivors of Sadeas's betrayal at the Tower — because empty barracks were so easy to find. Female scribes with red eyes supervise parshmen hauling out the personal effects of the men who will not need them. Kaladin calls Moash, Skar, and Teft over and walks them past barrack after barrack of the rest of the surviving bridgemen — hollow-eyed, shaggy, sitting alone even when crowded together — and lays out his plan. Combine forty understrength crews into twenty teams of about fifty; have Teft train forty of the most willing first, two from each team, and let them carry it from there. He turns westward toward the king's complex on the hill and tells them the rest: most of Bridge Four will be needed to keep the Blackthorn alive, because he is the only lighteyes on the Plains who has shown bridgemen anything like compassion, and his successor would sell them back to Sadeas inside a day. The "Assassin in White" — the same man who killed Old Gavilar — has by now murdered the emperor of Azir and thrown Jah Keved into turmoil, leaving half a dozen nations without rulers; whether the assassin comes to the Plains or not, the answer is the same. Kaladin names Moash, Skar, Teft, Sigzil, and Rock as lieutenants — a rank ordinarily reserved for low lighteyes — with Rock over the kitchens and quartermastering, Lopen his second, Teft in charge of training, Sigzil as clerk because he is the only one who can read glyphs. He, Moash, and Skar — the three killers among them — will personally guard Dalinar and his sons in shifts. Skar almost lets slip that he saw Kaladin's eyes change colour during the Tower; Kaladin cuts him off.
The men file into a tattooist's tent in the warcamp market. Hobber — the gap-toothed bridgeman Kaladin first saved — sits first, has his slave brand covered by the glyph for freedom along with the date and the name of the man who freed him, and then stubbornly asks for "Bridge Four" added beneath, because he was not freed *from* the crew but *by* it. Every man follows him into the chair. Rock, Beld, and Teft, who were sent to the bridges without first being branded slaves, insist on taking the same glyph on their foreheads anyway; only Moash, unbranded and unwilling to advertise former slavery, takes it on his upper arm. The tattooist balks at inking Shen — "He's property" — and the other bridgemen, Hobber first, shout her down until she sighs and works through the parshman's forehead anyway.
Kaladin sits last. Each time the woman wipes his forehead, the ink slides back out with the Stormlight he has unconsciously been drawing in; he banishes it and breathes out a small cloud of glowing smoke when she is not looking, and the second attempt holds — until Syl settles on his shoulder, looks into the mirror beside him, and whispers, "Life before death." A faint draw of Stormlight passes through him on reflex and the fresh glyph melts down his face, leaving the shash brand untouched beneath. He shrugs it off for the crew, tells them the scars are not done with him yet, and promises to try again later. Outside the tent Teft presses again, quieter and harder this time, that Kaladin should walk up the hill, breathe in Stormlight in front of Dalinar, and force the lighteyes to acknowledge what he is — a Surgebinder, a Knight Radiant in the making. Kaladin refuses. Every lighteyes he has ever known has taken from him whatever they discovered he had — family, brother, friends, more — and he will not give them this.
On the way through the market Kaladin notices how many parshmen are quietly working around him and wonders what they think of a war whose object is to defeat the only free parshmen in the world. He also catches a pair of patrolling soldiers raising their hands crossed at the wrists — the old Bridge Four salute — and realizes the calm of Dalinar's camp has more dread in it than discipline; everyone here knew a man who fell at the Tower. Sigzil notes that it is pleasant to be looked at like heroes; Moash wonders how long the goodwill will last; Rock threatens to kick him with his "big Unkalaki feet."
The last stop is the Kholin quartermastery, a worked-stone building rather than a Soulcast one. Rind the tenner quartermaster has laid out what remains of the uniforms of the Cobalt Guard — far more than he ever expected to have unused at once — with chain mail, breastplates, steel caps, and new spears to follow. The bridgemen, who have spent years in loincloths and leather, gather around with an excitement Kaladin has not seen in them; Moash emerges from the changing stall blushing at his own reflection. Then Lopen picks at the Cobalt Guard patch on his shoulder, says they are not those men, and Skar cuts his patch off with his belt knife. The rest follow — "We're Bridge Four" — and Teft tells Kaladin they are guarding the Blackthorn as their own crew, not replacing what he lost. Kaladin promises Rind a glyphpair to commission new patches with. The last uniform on the counter is his: a long blue double-breasted captain's coat with silver buttons and a white-lined longcoat over a waistcoat — the cut of a lighteyed officer, and, Rind thinks, the first such coat ever issued to a darkeyes. Kaladin cuts the Cobalt Guard insignia from the shoulder and lays it with the rest.